Drawing the line: when does a murder become terrorism?

Two men hack a soldier to death on a London street. Is it terrorism, or just a horrific crime?

Reports of last week's attack in Woolwich have prompted a small backlash from the public, who contacted Fairfax objecting to our use of the ''t-word''.

Typical of the complaints was from ''Tom'', who wrote to this reporter saying ''Just because a sociopath killed a soldier and stated his motive doesn't mean it was an act of terrorism.

''I think it's dangerous and stupid to label this lunacy as a terrorist act, as it suggests something much larger than actually occurred. It creates far too much absurd fear in modern society.''

Dr Binoy Kampmark, lecturer at RMIT in Melbourne, wrote in a column published by Scoop Media that in the case of the Woolwich attack, ''hardly anything has actually been said to warrant the term'' when the media were already calling it a terrorist act.

However, soon afterwards, videos of one of the alleged attackers at the scene were widely distributed.

''We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone,'' the alleged attacker said to a bystander who was recording him.

''Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.

''We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government; they don't care about you.''

For Brooke Rogers, senior lecturer in risk and terror at King's College London, this was a moment of clarity. Earlier, she had been warning about premature use of the word terrorism. ''Once you label something as terrorism it puts all kinds of different processes in place,'' she said. ''It has very different implications for communities and international relations, so I hesitate to use that quickly.

''But I think in this case it should be labelled as terrorism.''

Dr Rogers says motivation is the key. ''[The Woolwich attack] is very much politically motivated even though they are framing it in a religious context,'' she said. ''If you start looking at the Islamist ideologies they have very political end goals, aims and objectives. ''They have kind of gone a little bit 'old-school' in terms of targeting a military target … the more fundamentalist terrorist groups are much more open to targeting members of the public.

''However, that very public targeting of an individual in broad daylight on a busy road was clearly intended to communicate with the public at large and to make them feel fearful and to make them change behaviour, to encourage them to put pressure on politicians … to change their behaviour or laws, and for all those reasons I think it does qualify as terrorism.''

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/drawing-the-line-when-does-a-murder-become-terrorism-20130526-2n5aq.html